NSW govt lists new software suppliers

The NSW government has selected a panel of providers to supply agencies with software to manage the state's records, email, images and other unstructured content.

The list of 10 suppliers selected by the NSW government includes ELO Digital Office, EMC/Documentum, Interwoven, Opentext, Oracle, Tower Software Engineering (TRIM), Optus-owned Alphawest Services, and Vignette. Australian-owned suppliers that made the cut include web content management vendor Netcat and Objective.

The suppliers in the panel will provide software to manage unstructured content, in particular the state's records, which include documents, web content, business systems data, emails, images, audio, video and maps. The systems typically include workflow and collaboration software, able to be integrated with content generating systems such as email.

The panel comes under the Government Selected Application Systems (GSAS) program for NSW government agencies, run by the Department of Commerce and replaces the "ITS 2323 - Records and Information Management Systems" contract, which expired on 31 December, 2007.

The new contract started in June this year and will take the government through to 31 May, 2011, with the option of adding two one-year extensions.

The panel contract will entitle agencies to transfer licences between each other, as well as select components of a content management platform rather than buy unnecessary functionality, the government claimed.

The NSW government plans to use the panel to reduce the time it takes to procure solutions by standardising procurement procedures across all agencies. Government spokespeople were unable to provide comment at the time of publishing the article.

The initiative appears to be part of the state's overarching People First technology consolidation initiative, whose goals include cutting significant amounts out of the state's annual ICT spend.